If you ask me ‘What’s new?’, I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it’s better today.
I’m content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion – I’ve used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last.
If nothing much happens, I’m thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you’re after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don’t go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don’t need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I’ve found a safe mooring,
I’ve just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

The line “There was drama enough in my turbulent past” is so true. After tears and passion in pursuit of a “normal” life, I would rather be a boring cabbage living an ordinary and quiet life under a safe roof. Excitement would carry me a little too far from what I want. I am content that we are still living, eating, sleeping, working and making love in our small little world.

Let’s sort this out. Make no more sherry
scones for the man that stole my jewels
and I’ll stop spitting in your sherry.
Both of us have been fools.

Here, you can have my rope and pins
if you give up your hooks and nails
and we’ll agree to wear wide grins
for subsequent betrayals.

Even a bond as firm as this
friendship cannot withstand attacks
if they are too direct; let’s hiss
behind each other’s backs.

In future, when I tread thick oil
into your house, I’ll hide my feet,
and if you have to be disloyal
please try to be discreet.

I think this poem is about disloyalty and betrayal, in terms of sexual relations, between lovers. The lovers are angry about each other’s betrayal behind each other’s back and are ready to enter a fight. The poet said next time if it happens again, she would love their behaviour to be more polite and less harmful towards each other.

You tell me to live each day
as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
where before coffee I complain
of the day ahead—that obstacle race
of minutes and hours,
grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not
live each day as if it were the first—
all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
her eyes awake that first morning,
the sun coming up
like an ingénue in the east?

You grind the coffee
with the small roar of a mind
trying to clear itself. I set
the table, glance out the window
where dew has baptized every
living surface.

The poet should be a housewife having a hectic schedule and being occupied with household chores. Her husband urges her not to waste time and put off work as if it were her last day. But the poet desires to live as if it were her first when she could be like an innocent girl seeing the world in all astonishment and in new perspective. While her husband is grinding the coffee and making annoying noises, the poet looks out the window through which she desires a new life.

When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.

I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.

If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out “I am
an orphan.”

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!

This simple poem is about Frank O’hara who spends his childhood in sadness and loneliness until he comes across poetry in which he finds beauty.